Soccer Dad

Domestic abuse vs. honor killing

Cheat Seeking Missiles noted that when the New York Times finally got around to covering the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, it still tread very carefully. CSM concludes:

Now, he could have shot her, or strangled her, or crushed her skull with a tire iron or done any of a number of other well established American ways to kill in a fit of passion. But instead, he did something almost unique to Islam - he beheaded her. This is no easy feat. It's time-consuming, difficult, and very, very personal.

You behead someone not to kill them, but to send a message. And the message Mazzammil Hassan was sending was simple: I will not be dishonored!

The NYT, after waiting a week to cover the story, has made itself complicit in covering up the true nature of the crime.

Adding insult to injury, the Times followed that news report up with a blog post at the Lede steering the discussion away from "honor killing." The title of the post was Buffalo Killing Puts Spotlight on Domestic Abuse.

The Muslim-American community in Buffalo and around the United States has reacted with outrage over suggestions that this was a religiously motivated killing, an "honor killing" brought on by the shame of Mr. Hassan's wife seeking a divorce. The Hassans were originally from Pakistan. Although some Muslim fanatical extremists have justified "honor killings" because of shame brought on a family, Islam is a peaceful religion, and does not condone such violence, Muslim-American leaders have repeated in the last week as the case drew more attention.

Like Cheat Seeking Misslies, Daniel Pipes is skeptical of the killing being classified as domestic abuse, so he lays out the criteria for each. One of the characteristics of an honor killing is:

At least half the time, the killings are carried out with barbaric ferocity. The female victim is often raped, burned alive, stoned or beaten to death, cut at the throat, decapitated, stabbed numerous times, suffocated slowly, etc.

Domestic abuse on the other hand is described:

While some men do beat a spouse to death, they often simply shoot or stab them.

Now the Hassan case differs from a standard honor killing in that it was a husband killing a wife. However the ferocity of the killing, as noted by Cheat Seeking Missiles, clearly marks the crime as a possible honor killing. The Times in deference to political correctness won't allow a serious discussion of that possibility.